Deirdré Straughan on Italy, India, the Internet, and the world

Win Some, Lose Some

Since my whine about our iPod troubles , I’ve received several offers to help solve the problems, as well as several other stories of customer dissatisfaction with the iPod. So I should follow up.

Rossella’s friend who also has an iPod was able to load new tracks onto hers, which told me that the iPod itself was okay, and sending it back to Apple would be useless. The problem is evidently between my computer and the iPod, although that doesn’t explain why the Mac I borrowed couldn’t see the iPod, either. To charge Ross’ iPod, we continued plugging it into the FireWire cable attached to my Windows PC, so I was happily surprised when, on its return from the friend, the iPod was again recognized by Windows. Maybe it suddenly realized it was supposed to accept new songs as well as play old ones. I hastened to load it up with music before it changed its mind. Since then, the connection between the iPod and my computer has been erratic, but generally available.

The new problem is that the battery doesn’t last long. I’ve been over to the Apple support site for advice, and it looks as if I’ll have to do some testing to determine to Apple’s satisfaction that there really is a problem before I try to send it in for warranty repair. A friend is seeing short battery life with her own much newer iPod, too. I do note on the site that Apple has halved the scandalous price they were charging to replace out-of-warranty batteries, to “only” $99 plus shipping. But there are ways to do it more cheaply, and, once it’s out of warranty, you might as well.